Crimes Against the Press in Mexico

A projection of a camera with the Spanish word for “danger” is projected onto a landmark building in Oaxaca during a vigil for photojournalist Rubén Espinosa, who was killed in Mexico City in 2015 - along with four women

On May 15, Mexican journalist Javier Valdez was pulled from his car and shot twelve times in broad daylight. It happened in the middle of a street in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa. In the month since, no arrests or major breakthroughs have been made.

But that’s not unexpected in a country where crimes against media workers have a near 100 percent impunity rate.

The Mexico office of Article 19 has documented 33 murders of Mexican journalists since President Enrique Peña Nieto took office in late 2012. Valdez may be the highest profile journalist among them. He co-founded an independent publication in the heart of Sinaloa cartel territory, authored multiple books on the deeper social impacts of drug wars, and shared his time and expertise with national and international reporters dropping in on his home state.

Journalist Javier Valdez

“He was an inspiration to a generation of journalists in Mexico, for his courage, his clarity, and his fierce and relentless reporting,” says Kate Doyle, senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. She was having coffee in Mexico City with another journalist from Culiacán when Valdez was murdered. “We both found out about his assassination looking at our phones as we walked away from our meeting.”

Doyle and a handful of other U.S. writers and journalists who have worked in Mexico have put out a call-to-action to use the one-month mark since Valdez’s murder, to keep a spotlight on the case and the overall precarious situation for the press in Mexico. Outlets like ProPublica, Univision and the Houston Chronicle have answered the call and reporters at other large publications like the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have vowed to throw their social media weight behind the campaign.

The killing of media workers in Mexico during the last decade has become so common that press workers here have to remind themselves that it’s not normal for their profession to be life-threatening.

Press workers here have to remind themselves that it’s not normal for their profession to be life-threatening.

“Covering stories of narcotrafficking and of the corruption and collusion between narcos and the government has turned into a type of death sentence for journalists,” Valdez’s friend and colleague Sanjuana Martínez told me shortly after his murder. “Before, the visibility and prestige of one’s work at the national and international level constituted a type of shield, but that’s not the case anymore.”

Rather than launch rigorous investigations, authorities tasked with bringing the crimes to justice have more often opted to smear the victims or pursue motives unrelated to the reporter’s work. But that’s harder to do for a journalist like Valdez, who was well-regarded and whose work has won internationalawards.

Valdez’s murder—and those of at least five other journalists this year—drew swift condemnation from U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson. However, it’s unclear if there will be further diplomatic pressure to push for credible investigations.

Under an executive order he signed shortly after taking office, Donald Trump hinted that foreign aid to Mexico—at least of the non-militarized variety—is on the chopping block. That could cripple programs which have given at least some financial and moral backing to Mexican journalists via U.S. Embassy programs and USAID grants to press freedom organizations.

Some journalists in Mexico have left the profession, while others have settled into a patronage system in which uncritical writing is rewarded with public advertising directly controlled by government agencies or elected officials. But others, like Sanjuana Martínez, have doubled down on their craft, both in terms of quality and commitment.

There’s no shortage of social issues that require investigative attention, from corruption scandals to human rights abuses to ongoing conflicts over natural resources and longtime struggles for indigenous rights. There’s a core group of journalists in Mexico who have taken up Javier Valdez’s declaration of “No to silence” and are doing remarkable work under duress and in very dangerous conditions. Their work is both an example and a lesson. And they need our support.

Shannon Young is an independent journalist based in Oaxaca, Mexico. A longtime editor and reporter at the now-shuttered Free Speech Radio News, her radio work has aired on the CBC, PRI’s The World, DW, Radio Netherlands and beyond. Her print bylines include Vice News, The Texas Observer and Global Post. Follow her on Twitter at @SYoungReports.